At 74, Yalom has penned a book that is the climax of his lifework, focusing on the universal human issues of mortality and death. He suggests that what he calls the "awakening experience" can help us acknowledge, accept, and utilize our fear of death in a very positive manner. Such an awakening experience can be as simple as a dream, or quick as a sudden insight. It is often a loss, a trauma, or just plain aging that can prompt an awakening experience that is a turning point for a more meaningful life.

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Publisher's Summary

Irvin D. Yalom is an author whose best-selling trade books and novels tell compelling, dramatic, and illuminating stories with which readers can identify.

At 74, Yalom has penned a book that is the climax of his lifework, focusing on the universal human issues of mortality and death. He suggests that what he calls the "awakening experience" can help us acknowledge, accept, and utilize our fear of death in a very positive manner. Such an awakening experience can be as simple as a dream, or quick as a sudden insight. It is often a loss, a trauma, or just plain aging that can prompt an awakening experience that is a turning point for a more meaningful life. He discusses how people can make lasting changes in their lives, rearrange their priorities, communicate more deeply with those they love, eliminate interpersonal fears of rejection, and increase a willingness to take risks for personal fulfillment and a life filled with love.

Let me start by saying that the title of this book and the publisher's summary makes it seem that it will be dark and scary territory. While there is an open discussion about fear, anxiety and death the book is very positive and life affirming.

Yalom offers a balanced, insightful and humane approach. More importantly his long career as a therapist and a professor/trainer of other therapists brings into play a rich background of actual experience. I really enjoyed the case study approach of this book. To me, hearing about the concerns and struggles of real people takes the material out of theory and makes it both tangible and useable.

Recommended if you are a therapist or are interested in working with panic and anxiety issues on a personal level. Fascinating and engaging concepts to assist in focusing on living life fully not fearfully.

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